You couldn't have asked for a more insane first game to start the 2014 NBA Finals. Nor one that lent itself to more heat-related puns. Headline-writers were salivating across the nation yesterday--except for the ones in the AT&T center, who had no moisture left in their bodies. I'll be recapping the game in a little later today myself, but here are some of the takes on it all.
So many things happened last night. Paul Flannery at SBNation has a good recap of it all, the boys and girls of Grantland also have a good look back, and Jack Maloney at Hardwood Paroxysm has all the good pictures and gifs and whatnot. In the Grantland writeup especially there is a lot of good attention drawn to the smaller things we might have missd: Manu's amazing performance, Boris Diaw putting up a great game, and the crazy amount of turnovers the Spurs will seriously have to fix, if they want to win this series--though it wasn't entirely clear whether that number was provoked by Miami's defense, or simply the heat getting to everyone's head.
But attention naturally drifts back to LeBron with this game, and his absence. Ian Levy at FiveThirtyEight has the best take on this. Basically, the numbers say that this team simply needs LeBron, and can't win without him. It may look like the Spurs actually contained LeBron there on the court. He wasn't scoring at a huge clip throughout the game (though in that time period, he threw down 25 points--amazing). But the damage he does by his mere presence, the way it alters the Spurs defense, allows Miami to score and to operate with devastating efficiency. He literally has NO plus/minus for those 33 minutes: that means he IS the team, essentially. Even if he just stood there, it seems, he'd be doing more to help his team than being on the bench. His playing 33 minutes, Levy concludes, is what really hurt the Heat this game.
Then let's get to the cramping. Andrew Lynch at Hardwood Paroxysm has an interesting article on the relation of this, the most simple and basic sports injury, to some of the most complex science we research. In short, he speculates on whether the tendency to cramp in LeBron may be genetically related, and what, if that's the case, sports science can do about it.
Will Carroll, writer on sports injuries for Bleacher Report, returns us to what we do know, and writes a very detailed, extremely informative breakdown of what makes the muscles, well, break down when they get cramped. It also goes into treatment and what we can expect for game 2. Essentially, muscles just dry out. The article calls attention to how the Heat medical staff and trainers gave the team ice packs to cool down the heat (and had LeBron change his uniform), as if this were their emphasis, rather than hydration (which must have been up there too, of course).
It also points to LeBron wearing his compression sleeves and coverings on his leg, which would have not allowed as much cooling--the medical staff might have had him take those off, though it's unclear what other effects that would also have had. One thing that it is good to remember is that the athletes prepare days in advance for these games, hydrating over the course of the week. James alluded to this in his remarks on what happened: apparently, even that was not enough hydration for the event.
All of this brings into relief too just how extreme are the conditions on which the athletes normally compete, and some understanding of all the effort they put into just regularly functioning. We're also not hearing stories about the other players in the game suffering the way LeBron suffered, interestingly, and this must tell you something about just how hard his body is working on the court.
Many people are accordingly chastising those that were hating on LeBron for not playing through the cramps. The comparisons to Jordan are always inane, I think we can all agree about that. Bill Barnwell of Grantland pointed people to a passage in Roland Lazenby's new biography of Jordan that said he too sat out a game because of problems, despite the "flu" game or whatever it was. Dan Feldman lays it all out with the appropriate quote from the book.
But people also are going after the twitter users (many wearing Spurs jerseys) who posted pictures of themselves being carried by their friends "off the court" and hashtagging #LeBroning to their pictures. While it bespeaks a kind of insensitivity and unappreciation of the sheer discipline, effort, and science required to compete at the level at which LeBron is competing, I don't think it's too horrible. It is especially not as bad as the MJ comparisons, which are about legacies and reputations and seek to confuse our perception of history itself. Imitation is also flattery, remember.
Furthermore, I don't think it's unreasonable of the fans to cheer or boo when LeBron was taken out--though I think Spurs fans watching, who were disappointed in the crowd, were noble in their desire to correct those members of their tribe. Frankly speaking, it was 90 degrees in there and I don't think anyone in the arena was in a position to use their best judgment. If it happens during a normal night, then it's acceptable. But I'd be riled up as hell and murderous if I were in there myself.
One last thought: everyone is saying that we can't quite analyze this game because of all the conditions. That's true, to an extent. But what last night also reminded us is that sports events are absolutely crazy, and often involve luck and chance as much as preparation. If anything, Miami knows that from last year's Game 6. What is also great is that this produces as many stories as when things go according to plan--possibly even more interesting ones.
Well, that's the news for this morning. Now I'm going to go drink a glass of water.
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